Fear and Loathing of ‘Agenda 21’ in New Mexico

A non-binding resolution, passed at a United Nations conference more than 20 years ago, is suddenly a “threat to homes (and the) property of our middle-class” in New Mexico.

That’s according to the column, “Agenda 21 threat to homes, property of our middle-class,” which got the top spot on the Sunday Journal’s Op-Ed page, the newspaper’s highest circulation day.

Written by state Rep. Tom Anderson, R-Albuquerque, the column is vague on what Agenda 21 actually says, but we learn nine paragraphs into the column that Anderson is so worried about it he has introduced House Bill 307, “which prohibits the state of New Mexico from adopting or implementing policies that result from Agenda 21 - or the United Nations Rio Declaration of Environment and Development - without due process.”

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The claims that Agenda 21 takes us from fighting poverty to redistributing wealth, or that trying to conserve resources and open spaces is a plot to take away our way of life, have been around ever since the resolution was passed. But as the New York Times has noted, the protests those claims have spawned have “gained momentum in the past two years because of the emergence of the Tea Party movement, harnessing its suspicion about government power and belief that man-made global warming is a hoax.”

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On top of all that, Glenn Beck has attached his name to a book entitled Agenda 21, described as a “thriller” about a “republic” in which “there is no president. No Congress. No freedom.”

I say “attached his name” because, according to the woman who edited an early draft of the book, Agenda 21 was actually written by Harriet Parke, whose name is also on the cover, and Beck purchased the rights to say it was written by him.

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This article gives a good overview of the Tea Party outrage about ‘Agenda 21’, including Koch brothers, John Birch Society, and other organizations around the country. The rest of the article is here: Fear and Loathing of ‘Agenda 21’

Here is a little more background about the New Mexico legislator who offered this bill for the consideration of the New Mexico House of Representatives:

He is the author of NM House Bill 302 which is designed to protect teachers who want to teach anti-evolution or climate change denialism. This is not too different than the bill Michele Bachmann, who is also an idiot, introduced when she was a Republican member of the State legislature in Minnesota some years ago.

House Bill 302, as it’s called, states that public school teachers who want to teach “scientific weaknesses” about “controversial scientific topics” including evolution, climate change, human cloning and — ambiguously — “other scientific topics” may do so without fear of reprimand. The legislation was introduced to the New Mexico House of Representatives on Feb. 1 by Republican Rep. Thomas A. Anderson.

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Republicans fear Agenda 21, but they don’t fear the consequences of climate change. That’s a dangerous lack of discernment.